Industrialization of the virtual factory: BMW Group optimizes production planning

Smarter Production Check BMW's Virtual Factory Saves Costs in Production Planning

2025-06-13 By BMW Group | Translated by AI 2 min Reading Time

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The BMW Group is industrializing its virtual factory, as has now been announced. Production planners are continuously scaling use cases in the digital twins of the over 30 production sites ...

The virtual factory of the BMW Group is becoming a key to the economic success of upcoming vehicle production. Learn here why this is so ...(Image: BMW Group) — The virtual factory of the BMW Group is becoming a key to the economic success of upcoming vehicle production. Learn here why this is so ...
(Image: BMW Group)

With the industrialization of the BMW Group's virtual factory (BMW i-Factory), global production planning is being accelerated, according to the company. What once took several weeks of modifications and testing can now be accurately simulated, says BMW. These are the best conditions for the upcoming launches in the plants. By 2027, the BMW Group will integrate over 40 new or revised car types into its global production. However, now virtually, and then, according to the goal, they will be stable in the plants on the first try. In the long term, the virtual factory ideally reduces production planning costs by 30 percent. The virtual factory is also rapidly evolving, with more and more use cases being scaled. Besides virtual automated collision testing, this includes human simulation to optimize manual production tasks, as well as automatically deriving environment maps from existing 3D scans for smart transport systems.

Four Weeks Become Three Days ...

Virtual planning is a core element in the setup. It encompasses numerous tools. According to BMW, through the "intelligent" linking of building data, equipment data, logistics data, vehicle data, and 3D simulation of manual work processes, digital twins of all the automaker's global plants are created. In an industrial 3D metaverse application—based on Nvidia Omniverse—simulations can be conducted in real-time, and layouts, robotics, and logistics systems can be virtually optimized. The BMW Group's virtual factory is continuously expanded with generative and agent-based AI functions (to achieve goals with limited supervision) and assistants. And with each production start-up, it must be checked whether the new product fits the production line and never collides with the surroundings, as BMW explains. In the virtual factory, the collision check is therefore digital, automated, and fast. It is based on design data combined with 3D scans. The movement and rotation of a vehicle through the production lines are precisely simulated. The system automatically checks for collisions. What used to take a good four weeks now takes only three days, as BMW emphasizes.

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